Shell to start carbon-capture project in western Canada

New York Times : Royal Dutch Shell will start work on a project to store the carbon dioxide emissions from an oil sands treatment plant outside Edmonton, Alberta. The goal of the Quest project, which is set to begin operations in 2015, is to reduce the plant’s emissions by 35% by storing more than one million tons of carbon dioxide per year. Shell’s estimates equate that to removing 175 000 cars from the road each year. As practiced at Quest, carbon-capture works by liquefying carbon dioxide and piping it into injection wells, which allows it to be stored a mile below Earth’s surface. The project is estimated to cost Can$1.35 billion ($1.36 billion), approximately $874 million of which will be subsidized by the Canadian and Albertan governments.